Len Brown. Photo / Dean Purcell
A new island off Westhaven marina, a swimming pool at the end of Queens Wharf and a redundant motorway offramp transformed into a green walkway similar to New York's "Highline" are among the projects planned for Auckland City over the next 30 years.
The projects are part of the Waterfront
Plan and the Central City Plan, both of which come under the umbrella of the Draft Auckland Plan, due to be formally released next month and completed at the end of the year.
They are all part of Mayor Len Brown's vision of making the city a more "liveable" place - and the central city somewhere Aucklanders will choose to live rather than contributing to urban sprawl.
By 2040 it is estimated there will be a million more of us, and the draft plan aims to ensure we live within the already defined metropolitan urban limits: 75 per cent of residential development will be mostly concentrated along established and planned public transport links.
Parts of Queen, Fanshawe, Quay and High Sts will be given over to pedestrians, while traffic volumes along large arterial roads such as Nelson and Hobson Sts will be halved - the remainder of the streets becoming broad, leafy boulevards, with cycling and walking paths.
